Black (Snake) Friday

I didn’t sleep well the night before. I woke up to a messy house. And my toe, that I dropped a Lucite pepper grinder on a few days prior, was throbbing.

And then a few other things happened that led to the following tweets. Because tweeting about things, both good and bad, makes me feel better. I don’t care if any of my 100 followers read it. (Well, yes I do. Please don’t unfollow me.) But tweeting is like cheap therapy for my soul.

So here is my morning succession of 3 tweets:

So I did. Go home that is. And to give myself an attitude re-adjustment, I did what I usually do: clean, drink more coffee and do laundry. But while I was cleaning, something just outside my sliding glass door caught my eye.

Now usually, I’m not easily distracted but I was in awe of this very long black snake because around his middle was skin that had not yet been completely shed. I wanted to get a closer look so I opened up the slider.

The thing didn’t even flinch when I made some noise so I started to get pissed that it wasn’t the least bit scared of me. I mean I’m an imposing figure, all 5′ 2″ of me in my pajama top and my sweatshirt, braless, extra cup of coffee in hand and teeth not brushed. Even my husband knows not to mess with me when I’m like this. The guy should have high-tailed it out of there. But he didn’t so I figured I’d go outside and see what the fuck his problem was. I went out the kitchen door, through the patio and around the back yard to get this shot.

You can see that he barely moved. Then I thought that maybe there was something wrong with him and I started to feel badly that I had all of these thoughts of picking him up by his tail and flinging him against the fence. (Misplaced aggression plus extra cup of coffee and lack of sleep starting to kick in. I’m usually an animal lover.) Who cares that he eats bugs, lizards and maybe even my neighbor’s cat that shits in my fenced in backyard. I wanted to see Black Snake slither.

So I did something uncharacteristically mean. I turned the hose on and sprayed him with water. At first, he just looked at me and kept sticking his tongue out, just like my kids do when they’re being awful. But then he turned away. And I thought he was going to slither in to our little garden. But no.

He gave me the old F U.

Yes, that is his tail you see. Going up the side of my house. In between the pressed wood siding and the concrete blocks that it covers. Now I’m really screwed. I don’t really think he can actually get inside. But the house was built 13 years ago and there is a chance that one of the blocks has been compromised and that he can squeeze his narrow snakey body through a crack. And slither upstairs to my bedroom. And that is not the kind of snake that I look forward to greeting in my bed. So now, I have to sleep with one eye open. And my legs closed tight.

What’s a dewlap?

A dewlap is the loose skin that hangs under the neck of an animal. Like on a lizard. Or an old(er) person. You know exactly what I’m talking about. And now you know the word for it. An everyday thing that you can’t define. Until someone defines it for you. Life is full of things like this. And so is my blog.